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The Devourers: A Novel Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Indra Das (Author), Shishir Kurup (Narrator), Meera Simhan (Narrator),

472

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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For listeners of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, and David Mitchell comes a striking debut novel by a storyteller of keen insight and captivating imagination.

On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man's unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger's behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.

From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood deep and ages old. The tale features a rough wanderer in 17th-century Mughal, India, who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman - and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok's interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent.

Shifting dreamlike between present and past with intoxicating language, visceral action, compelling characters, and stark emotion, The Devourers offers a listening experience quite unlike any other novel.

Listening Length

13 hours and 27 minutes
Author

Indra Das
Narrator

Shishir Kurup, see all
Audible release date

July 12, 2016
Language

English
Publisher

Random House Audio
ASIN

B01HZWQBIK
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	13 hours and 27 minutes
Author	Indra Das
Narrator	Shishir Kurup, Meera Simhan
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	July 12, 2016
Publisher	Random House Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B01HZWQBIK
Best Sellers Rank	#68,439 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #618 in Historical Fantasy (Audible Books & Originals) #1,769 in Paranormal Fantasy #1,880 in Historical Fantasy (Books)

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4.2 out of 5

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Josh Mauthe

If Neil Gaiman were from India and wrote a werewolf horror tale/love story, you might get THE DEVOURERS

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2018

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One of my all-time favorite short stories is a Neil Gaiman tale named “Murder Mysteries”. It’s the story of a young man who’s out partying in Los Angeles, but gradually feels more and more disconnected from the hedonistic world around him. One night, as he wanders through the city, he meets a homeless man who asks for a cigarette, and after being given one, repays the favor by telling a story – the story of the first killing in Heaven. It’s a wondrous tale for so many reasons, but much of why I love it is the storytelling aspect of it – the way that the entire short story is both a story in of itself and a testament to the power of tales, to the way we impose narrative on the world in an effort to make sense of it. And what’s more, how so often, what a tale says is less important than how the listener receives it.

I found myself thinking of “Murder Mysteries” (and Gaiman’s work in general, sometimes) often as I read Indra Das’s The Devourers, an unclassifiable piece of genre fare that presents itself as a werewolf story, but has far, far more on its mind than just a simple horror story. It opens, in India, in a similar way to “Murder Mysteries,” with a stranger offering our protagonist – a lonely academic – some stories in exchange for some company. But as the stories come to sudden, explosive life in the mind of our academic – and as the stranger tries to explain that he is, more or less, a werewolf (at least, that’s the most understandable way he could explain it), it becomes clear that we are not in the normal world anymore. And then, our “werewolf” offers the academic a scroll that he needs translated, with no explanation or context.

What unfolds from there is fascinating, as we read the scroll’s account of life as a werewolf – our narrator? a friend of his? someone else entirely? – presented entirely through the shapeshifter’s perspective. We get a sense of how long this being has existed; how inaccurate the label “werewolf” may be in capturing the scope and power of this entity; we see how they relate (or not) to humankind; and we see the way he justifies even his most repellent actions, all as filtered through his grappling with a sense of purpose and meaning in his life. Meanwhile, our academic provides context to some of the notes, footnoting unfamiliar terms, and leading us to think about what all of this means – and ultimately reminding us that we, like the academic, are struggling to figure out how this connects to the stranger we’ve met already.

The Devourers continues to evolve in its second half, with the introduction of another scroll that complicates the first, and manages somehow to sustain two full narratives – the ancient (?) tale of the scrolls and the growing contemporary connection between the academic and the shapeshifter. Interweaving Indian history, world religions, and more, Das brings both halves of the story to rich life, with every character growing in complexity and nuance as the tale evolves into something unclassifiable. At times, it’s a “urban” fantasy novel (if one could be set in the pre-urban days as the Taj Mahal was being built); at times, it’s a horror story; and at its core, it may even be a romance. That Das doesn’t care about what kind of story it is, and indeed, lets each half underline and emphasize the other, makes The Devourers all the more remarkable and compelling, as he treats his fantastic elements with emotional weight and heft, investing himself as much in his characters as in his conceits, and bringing to vibrant life both temporal versions of India.

I couldn’t help but think of Gaiman frequently as I read The Devourers, but that’s not a bad thing; Das feels like an author inspired by Gaiman’s magical realism and fantastic but grounded worlds, and yet also feels like no one other than himself. Creating a fantastic world somewhere between “Murder Mysteries” and The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Devourers is rich, compelling, heartbreaking, and more beautiful and optimistic than you may think from its early going. If it doesn’t quite stick the landing, that’s understandable, to me; this is one of those cases where the journey is so satisfying that I can forgive the destination for not quite clicking as much as I wish it did. As for the rest of the book, it’s beautifully written, lushly imagined, and incredibly thoughtful and satisfying – and ultimately, surprisingly moving.

15 people found this helpful

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VanEzzania

Bisexual and Genderfluid Werewolves in India (SPOILERS)

Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2020

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I am not one to post content or trigger warnings but here they are: Gore, disembowelment, cannibalism, death of children and babies, rape (not depicted on page), urination, tasting urine, homophobia (challenged), sexism (challenged), body horror, swallowing semen, acute transphobia (challenged). And that's just what I can remember.

Ultimately, The Devourers is a visceral, graphic story switching between modern and Mughal-era (1600s) India. It begins when a professor named Alok is approached by a man claiming to be half-werewolf. Alok is drawn to the stranger, but when the stranger gives Alok some historical documents to transcribe that's when things get stranger. The documents are translations of original scrolls, written on human skin, describing the events around the shapeshifting werewolf from Scandinavia named Fenrir, his French companion and occasional past lover Gévaudan, and the Muslim Persian woman Cyrah whom Fenrir raped and impregnated.

It is a rough, carnal, and hard book to read. Underneath it all is a discussion of bisexuality, gender fluidity, the relationship between man and woman, who is foreigner and native, and what of humanity is truly savage.

Alok follows the stories of Fenrir and Cyrah and the stranger--it's fairly obvious that the stranger is Fenrir and Cyrah's child from the beginning. They are the ones who wrote each scroll at different points. It begins when Fenrir rapes Cyrah because he thinks he loves her. He denies that he raped her and impregnated her; this violates the shapeshifter laws, not because it is rape, but because he copulated with a human. After the rape, Cyrah experiences visions of people taking care of children, something that she feels violates her. She along with the French shapeshifter Gévaudan go after Fenrir to get revenge.

One of the most haunting things about the shapeshifters is that they eat people. They hunt them, disembowel them, and eat them. When they do so they absorb the memories, thoughts, and souls of those they devour. The visions of people taking care of children Cyrah saw were the memories of mothers and fathers whom Fenrir had eaten. The shapeshifters have two selves: the first is their human shape which can change, the second is their true, monstrous form that they use to hunt and mate.

Throughout the novel, Alok, Cyrah, Fenrir, and the stranger wonder at how truly bestial the shapeshifters are and how close to humanity they are. As I said, this is a graphic novel. The shapeshifters do all sorts of explicit things. When Cyrah rides the second self of Gévaudan, the prose explicitly talks about how his thick, sharp fur cuts her and makes her bleed. There is A TON of urinating scenes; I am assuming this is because wolves and dogs do this to mark their territory in real life. The reason Fenrir raped Cyrah is that he thought he loved her and wanted to create life, Cyrah rebukes him saying having sex and siring children does not make one in love or a father and that he is inhuman. Fenrir shoots back that he learned all this from actual humans, whether from watching them or devouring them.

Fenrir cannot differentiate between human love and hatred. A very haunting observation, even if he is a sociopath.

Wedged between this is some commentary on how men view women. It gets a little meta with how Alok points out how Fenrir wrote about Cyrah in his scroll. That is obviously a commentary on how men write and interpret women, though Das (who is a non-binary man, I believe) does not get pretentious about it or blow smoke up his own ass about it as most other male authors do. Cyrah outright tells Fenrir that he is the reason why women are so terrified about men in the world and that true love between men and women does exist. Cyrah slowly becomes friends with Gévaudan over the course of the book, something Gévaudan himself is resistant to ad first because 1) she's human and 2) he is fighting the urge to devour her. It's implied that he wants to devour Cyrah so he can morph into her visage and have Fenrir love him.

Thankfully, Gévaudan pushes these reasons away and does fight for Cyrah against Fenrir. Subtly, Cyrah and Gévaudan's relationship becomes one of the most equal relationships in the book, proving Cyrah right and subverting everything Fenrir thinks. Adjacent to this, there is constant mention throughout the Mughal-era portions of the book about the women related to the then Mughal emperor of the time Shah Jahan and how they inspired or influenced him to build certain structures in the empire. This is more than a commentary on how the women behind the men are used by said men to further things in society.

However, something occurred at the end of the novel that both devastated me and left me confused. The stranger, named Izrail, shows Alok what happened to Fenrir and Cyrah. After Cyrah gave birth to Izrail, she left him with a tribe of shapeshifters. She did not return to human civilization though; she and Gévaudan remained on the outskirts of both human villages and shapeshifter tribes watching Izrail be raised by the tribe. Eventually, she and Gévaudan are deified as a goddess and her vahana (mount). When Izrail become a young man, Cyrah finally met him and revealed to him who she was; she sent Gévaudan back to Europe. Izrail denies that she is his mother but eventually learns the truth: he is half-human, half-shapeshifter; in-between and something forbidden.

Cyrah tells him to devour her. Izrail doesn't want to, but he does. And he sees everything about her. His tribe leader, whose first self is a woman but whose second self is intersex, punishes him and throws him out. Then Izrail meets Fenrir and fights him. Fenrir loses and asks Izrail to devour him, and when he does the revelation comes out: Izrail sees all of what Fenrir has done since becoming a shapeshifter, all that he has killed and devoured. And it is here that we learn that Fenrir was not originally a man. He was born a woman who then shapeshifted into the first man she killed so that she both love and create and have power.

And it is here where I was left totally dumbfounded. The book talks about the power and monstrosity of men, but then we learn that the biggest monster in the entire book was initially a woman who changed because she wanted to do so many things...I don't know how to feel about this.

Alongside this, we learn that Alok is bisexual and is genderfluid and that for these reasons he was shamed by his parents and society. When he and Izrail have a tryst he senses everyone and everything, including Cyrah and Fenrir, in him. He mostly longs for Cyrah and how her story possessed him. When Izrail leaves him he is saddened but hopes to him again in the future, possibly in the physical form of Cyrah. Cyrah the human who gave birth to a half-create, Cyrah the woman who became a goddess to some. The novel ends with a large paragraph talking about how Alok has become so many things and people: human, animal, man, woman, divine, shapeshifter, in-between, bisexual, neither man nor woman and both, Cyrah, Fenrir, Gévaudan, and Izrail.

At the end of the day, this book is a 3.75/5 stars for me. It is one of the few visceral and through-provoking looks at being bisexual, gender fluid, a man, a woman, and someone who does not fit within any schema. However, some of the carnal scenes of the book were a bit excessive and the revelation about Fenrir leaves me uncomfortable. This book wrecked me.

5 people found this helpful

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John Bates

Grows on you

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2019

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I did not care for this book at first because the opening chapters read like fanfic to me. It put me in an expectation of mediocrity. Luckily by the time we get to Cyrah's narrative the book really takes flight and becomes enjoyable. I liked the setting of India and the permutations of queerness and otherness that some of the characters go through. The concept of the book is eventually fully realized.
The book is quite gory so if you can't handle that, beware. I subtracted a star for the first section of the book which I found weak, and one star for the unnecessary multitude of endings. Ending on the cat or Alok's awakening would have been fine but it just kept going and going. I think maybe I'm a little too old to fully enjoy this book but there will be some for whom it is just right.

2 people found this helpful

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Ruchira Mandal

Highly Recommended

Reviewed in India on June 13, 2021

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"We all change, when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s OK, that’s good, you gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be."- The Time of the Doctor

Such a beautiful, visceral, aching take on love, longing, identities and the importance of telling and remembering our stories. A refreshingly beautiful, albeit violent and dark take on the werewolf myth. As someone in the reviews said, a bit Neil Gaiman (I am thinking of 'The Problem of Susan' in terms of the tone) but very Indian and at the same time universal.
Warning: Dark. Graphic violence.

One person found this helpful

fastbond

Vielversprechendes Debut

Reviewed in Germany on April 10, 2017

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Die außerordentliche sprachliche Begabung des Autors, die auch in den professionellen Kritiken gelobt wird, ist unverkennbar. Die Beschreibung des (heutigen) Indiens vom Beginn der britischen Kolonisation bis in die Neuzeit ist außerordentlich plastisch, die Beschreibung der Landschaften und die Vielfalt der hier zusammenlebenden Kulturen und Religionen bleiben mir in Erinnerung. Auch die Herangehensweise an das Thema der Werwölfe als eine Sorte der mit übermenschlichen Kräften versehenen Gestaltswandler ist herausragend gelungen, die Melancholie des Verlusts dieser halbgottähnlichen sagenhaften Wesen mit dem Heraufdämmern der Neuzeit prägt den Roman.

Warum also nur 3 Sterne?

Ich habe meine Schwierigkeiten mit der das ganze Buch durchdringenden homoerotischen Komponente (technisch sind die Gestaltswandler hermaphroditische Wesen, ihre sexuellen Beziehungen untereinander bleiben steril). Die explizit geschilderte Sexualität ist untrennbar mit bestialischer Gewalt (auch Vergewaltigung), Blut und Exkrementen gekoppelt. Die Charaktere rechtfertigen das mehr schlecht als recht mit ihrem übermenschlichen Wesen, andererseits klingt auch unterschwellig ihre Verabscheuung ihrer selbst (self-loathing) an vielen Stellen an. Als ein Mensch, der sich beruflich zur Aufgabe gemacht hat, menschliches Leid zu lindern, kann ich mit sexualisierter Gewalt nichts anfangen, besonders dann, wenn sie anscheinend auf ein ästhetisches literarisches Podest gestellt wird. Dieses Vorgehen scheint eine Entschuldigung zu implizieren. Eine autobiographische Komponente lässt sich nur mutmaßen, ich hoffe aber, dass sich Das von dieser Thematik lösen kann, dann werde ich seine nächsten Bücher mit großem Vergnügen kaufen und lesen.

3 people found this helpful

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Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya

A powerful imagination

Reviewed in India on December 25, 2018

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The author builds a fantasy world the richness of which can compare to that of the best works in this genre. A very satisfying read.

Brilliant stuff

Reviewed in India on November 6, 2015

Verified Purchase

I can't believe there are no reviews of this book yet on Amazon. It's a sad state of affair that books like this don't get the limelight they deserve.

At many points this reminded me of Amitav Ghosh's Calcutta Chromosome. Das manages to blend in a thread into Indian history, stretching it all the way from the Mughals to present day Kolkata and the Sunderbans. The story is very allegorical, addressing many questions like sexuality, what it means to be human, the idea of devouring instead of loving, how the former is a forced act and how much it takes for the latter, and how difficult it is.

Make no mistake though, unlike Ghosh's work, the themes here are pretty adult. This is not a fun fantasy book. There is serious stuff dealt with like sexual assault, cannibalism, etc. (Not saying that to deter a reader, but don't make it a gift for a young child without reading.)

Go for it!

4 people found this helpful

M V S

Disappointed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 12, 2021

Verified Purchase

I had really high hopes for this book. Really interesting premise. I enjoyed the world building in the first half of the book but by the middle the motivations of the characters became quite befuddling *spoiler* cyrah chasing after her rapist was a confusing choice. I think she thought she would get him to take her pregnancy away but in the end she didn't? It was quite clear that Fenrir wanted to impregnate her. Also the amount of times piss was mentioned in a chapter was just over the top. I'm fine with bodily fluids but within a context that makes sense instead of trying to make things "gritty". Overall wouldn't recommend.

One person found this helpful

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